


them changes

by awfulbutsexy



Series: Bless the Bleeder [2]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:49:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28947699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awfulbutsexy/pseuds/awfulbutsexy
Summary: nobody move, there's blood on the floor
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Bless the Bleeder [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123214
Comments: 28
Kudos: 41





	1. Prologue

It was a short drive to the safe house. Twenty minutes tops, through the densely dark and closely forested roads of Arkham Island, across the north bridge into the Narrows. Fifteen minutes maybe, with the way Tommy was working the gas.

The Narrows was an obvious destination and no doubt the area would be crawling with cops by morning, if they weren’t already combing the streets. The last few hours had been pretty low profile, but it wouldn’t take long before the late-night security started their shift and someone noticed he was missing. No matter. The safe house was just a pit stop. The Joker wasn’t planning to stay for long. For now - he dozed. Or at least pretended to.

His body was still humming with adrenaline. As he laid across the backseat of Tommy’s Honda, his knees tucked up to his middle, head nestled in the crook of his arm, he could feel his pulse hammering away. In his neck, in his chest, in his cock. It was the most action he’d gotten in a long time and his muscles were still singing with the rush of blood. Two years of twiddling his thumbs in a padded cell and he’d almost forgotten how good it felt to stretch his legs and run.

The escape had gone pretty much according to plan. A few casualties, fewer than he’d hoped - his doctor hadn’t been on call that night after all. But Tommy had come through for him, as he had so many times before. With the playing cards and the occasional cigarette. With the letters. And now with this.

Tommy was just the kind of goon he liked best. Simple, uncomplicated, concerned only with money. It hadn’t even taken very much for him to push his own shoddy morals aside. A couple thousand deposited anonymously into his account and he was bought and sold. He didn’t have a gambling problem, no kid waiting at home in need of a college fund - Tommy was just bored.

He could work with bored, he reasoned. Boredom made for good fun. It was exactly what had brought him and Joan together almost two years ago. That boredom that verged on desperation. He felt his pulse kick low in his stomach at the thought of her and smiled to himself, tonguing the crooked scar on his bottom lip.

Two years, some thirty letters, and not a single response. At first, he’d been angry, frustrated by his new isolation and hungry for just a scrap of her righteous indignation, the insistent uppity bitchiness that used to drive him wild. He’d made Tommy check and double-check under threat of untold mutilation that the address was correct, that the letters weren’t being returned. Eventually, it became clear that she was certainly receiving his letters and just opting for silence. And instead of anger, he felt _excited_.

He tried to imagine her face while she read them. That curious mixture of fear and disbelief in her eyes, the curve of repulsion in her mouth, the flush she got on the bridge of her nose when she was caught unawares. How many times had she read them? Had she thrown them out? Burnt them? If not, where did she keep them? Had she shown them to lover boy? Or was she keeping them a secret? _Their_ secret.

Joan had been bored when he met her, dissatisfied with the filth and the false glamor of her life, but she wasn’t like Tommy. Her boredom didn’t make her any easier to manipulate. Because Joan was a steel wall, an iron thorn in his side that made him _itch_.

She never let him have an inch, resisted him every step of the way, right up until he put a knife in her stomach. She’d tried to outsmart him, outplay him - and she might’ve succeeded, if not for the ambition of the cops she had chosen to trust. She’d passed every test he gave her - except for Dent.

_Fucking Den_ t. She hadn’t once flinched away from all the bodies and the blood he’d thrown at her, and then on what might’ve been the most important night of his "career", she’d suddenly decided to remember she had a conscience.

He blamed her for what happened on the ferries. As though her morality had been catching, spreading like a stubborn illness across the city that was supposed to be his. He’d had two years to think about that night and he still wondered if he’d been right to leave her alive.

He’d know for sure in a few hours.

The car had started to jostle with some amount of violence, which meant that they’d crossed the bridge into the Narrows where the streets were older and cobbled, generously littered with loose debris. “Nearly there, sir,” Tommy huffed over his shoulder, sparing him a hesitant glance in the rearview mirror.

The Joker didn’t bother with a reply, merely watched him back, half of his face concealed in the shadow of the backseat. Tommy didn’t like his silence, kept looking up at the mirror every few seconds. In the low light, he could just see the thin line of perspiration on his upper lip. _That_ made him smile. He didn’t have time for much menace, so the uneasy weight of his silence would have to do. At least until they reached their destination.

Another ten minutes on the road and Tommy stopped the car. Checked his mirrors for any hangers on. When he nodded that the coast was clear, the Joker unfurled himself from his position with a slow stretch, cracking his neck and back with an audible pop, before he reached for the side door and slid out onto the curb.

It was a clear night. Ideal for a drive. He hadn’t exactly been keeping track of the days, but the chill in the air put them squarely at the beginning of winter. His feet were bare and they ached as soon as they met the concrete, the wind cutting across his chapped lips and glancing the cut on his brow with a stinging kiss. He wondered if it snowed in Maryland. He imagined Joan building a snowman and smiled inwardly.

“Everything alright, sir?” Tommy again with that sir business.

“Peachy,” he replied, flashing him a glib smile, all teeth, as he circled around to the back of the car. “Pop the trunk for me will ya?”

Tommy did as he was told and clicked the little button on his keychain, watching him warily. “There should be an extra jacket in there. And some of the other stuff you asked for.”

The Joker leaned into the trunk and took inventory of the stuff in question. Change of clothes, couple thousand in cash, and a simple 9mm, silver barrel winking shyly at him in the dark. No shoes. He frowned as he took up the gun and checked the magazine.

“You done good, Tommy,” he muttered, biting the scars on the inside of his cheek to keep his teeth from chattering, “Couldn’t have asked for a better pal. Really made Arkham feel like home.”

Tommy shrugged mutely, eyes flitting up and down the street as if he were anxious to be on his way. Getting friendly with him must have seemed a much safer option when there was a wall of plexiglass in the way. But the time for second thoughts had long since passed.

The Joker shrugged into the extra coat he’d been promised and closed the trunk, moseying back around to the driver’s side of the car. He didn’t miss how Tommy took a small step back.

“What size you wear?”

“Huh?”

“Your shoes. What size do you wear?”

“Uh, 11?” Tommy shuffled back another half step, but it was already too late to run.

“That’ll work.”

The Joker raised his brand new toy and shot Tommy twice in the chest. His body fell in a heap on the sidewalk, the keys in his hand flying a couple yards to the left. The Joker pocketed the gun and stepped nimbly over him to retrieve them, then set to work untying Tommy’s sturdy work boots, standard-issue shit for guards at Arkham. He considered the socks, already damp with nervous sweat, as he listened to a dog carry on somewhere in the distance. He could make do without.

He straightened up, delighting in the sudden head rush, and slid into the driver’s seat. Threw a half-hearted deuce in the direction of Tommy’s body as he peeled away from the curb. At the first stoplight, he took a moment to tap the address he had memorized into the GPS console. Four hours to Maryland. He dug distractedly through the middle console as he shuttled through the Narrows and up into Gotham Heights, letting out a pleased grunt as his hand closed around the unmistakable shape of a candy bar.

“Tommy, you porky fuck, I love yah,” he muttered to himself, tearing into it with his teeth and spitting out a bit of plastic wrapping. His tongue sticky and tingling with sweetness, he pressed his foot down on the gas, a sudden furious pleasure climbing up into his chest, into his throat, threatening to shake the car with a joyful shout. He swallowed it down with a lump of nougat, opting to save it for when he crossed the state line.

For now, he could enjoy the sight of the night sky and the road unfolding in front of him, all of that endless perfect dark, his first taste of long-awaited freedom.


	2. Chapter 2

The feeling came all at once, the same way it always did. The hopeless, drowning feeling, as though someone was holding her underwater or forcing her head into the pillow or filling her mouth with sawdust. With a strangled gasp, Joan forced herself awake, pulling herself up and away from her pillow as though her nightmare might swallow her up again.

She sat for a moment, still reeling from the dread that was now as familiar to her as the body lying beside her, still soundly asleep. Chest heaving, she stared down at Sasha, a burst of envy caught in her throat. She reached for the light on the bedside table, taking no small pleasure when he began to stir, rolling over to squint up at her.

“Nightmares again?”

 _No shit._ “Yeah, something like that,” she murmured, trying her best to stifle her irritation. She’d wanted him awake after all.

“I told you, it’s those pills,” he grunted, shifting his face back into the pillow. His arm emerged from under the covers to make a half-aborted gesture at the light, before falling back down to pat her gently on the thigh. Joan shifted away from him, turning off the light and slipping out of bed before she started another fight about _the pills_. Nevermind that they were the only thing helping her sleep these days.

Since he got sober, Sasha had gotten real preachy about drugs. Didn’t like that Joan seemed so dependent on them and definitely didn’t like how she washed them down with bourbon. He always had some comment ready for her when she got back from the pharmacy, was insistent that there were better remedies for her insomnia.

In the beginning, it’d been sort of sweet. He was so patient when she woke up screaming, ready with a mug of herbal tea and even once or twice with a glass of warm milk which Joan insisted was a bit much. He’d hold her through the panic, remind her to keep breathing, keep the lights on until she was too exhausted to stay awake. But apparently he had his limits. Now the most she got was a lecture and a conciliatory pat on the rump. So for now the benzos would have to do.

If Joan were being honest with herself, something she rarely wanted to be, it wasn’t just about the pills. But it was easier to fight about them than talk about what Sasha _really_ wanted. Which Joan was desperate to avoid discussing at all costs. The thought sent a spike of unease through her as she moved through the house, already wishing for a stiff night cap.

The kitchen was quiet and cold, the east windows glowing with eerie blue light. It had snowed sometime in the night and there was a fine dust of glittering powder on the lawn. Sasha had lamented the loss of his garden when he’d checked the forecast earlier that day and had spent the last few hours of sunlight swaddling the larger plants in a few spare bed sheets to keep out the frost. But Joan had been excited.

They hadn’t seen much snow their first winter here. A few afternoons of loose flurries and a couple hundred icicles hanging from the rain gutters that threatened to impale them every time they slammed the front door too hard. But this was the snow she remembered. The kind that turned Sawyer into a wonderland, equal parts beautiful and cruel. She was already anxious to walk down to the lake to see if it had frozen over.

When she was a girl, her father would take her down to the water, transformed overnight into a solid mass of gray-green glass, and try to teach her how to ice skate. The activity she preferred, however, was throwing rocks against the frozen water, trying to see if she could fracture the ice. The sound it made when she succeeded both thrilled and terrified her, some animal part of her recognizing the ancient danger of death as it announced itself in the clearing.

She wondered if Sasha knew how to skate, if she could coax him out onto the ice if she managed to find an extra pair of skates in the shed out back. They could use a little fun.

For now, she would settle for a taste of whiskey and a small fire. The embers of the evening’s fire had long gone cold and as she assembled a fresh pile of firewood, she tried to remember what she’d been dreaming about before she’d been so rudely awakened.

It wasn’t always nightmares like Sasha thought. Sometimes she had regular dreams that just got _worse_. She’d be shopping at the general store or back at Johns Hopkins, running late for a class, or driving to some unknown destination, trying to name the song playing on the radio - and then she’d look down and find the end of a scalpel sticking out of her chest.

An echo of laughter would rattle down from the sky or through the speakers of the car and sometimes she’d join in. Go back to whatever she was doing, despite the blood pooling into her shoes. But then the feeling would start, horrible pins and needles that started in her brain and seemed to work their way down into her chest, her fingertips, pricking the bottoms of her feet. And then she would wake up, confused and terrified, hands flying up to pull out the knife she knew was killing her slowly.

The pills weren’t making her nightmares worse, but the drowning feeling was new. And so was the small part of her that wanted to give into it. That wanted to find out if there was some measure of peace on the other side of all that panic. Just another thing to add to the list of shit she never wanted to mention to Sasha. It didn’t look good and it certainly didn’t help the case for her sanity.

Sasha had been plenty good to her over the last year or so. And she _did_ love him. Told him so as much as she was able. The least she could do is give him some peace of mind.

The fire was burning brightly by now, heat pushing up against her face as she sat before the fireplace, her glass of bourbon tucked neatly between her crossed legs. With any luck, another sip or two, and she’d be ready to crawl back into bed. Sasha would be fast asleep so she could whisper that she was sorry for waking him up without too much embarrassment. And in the morning things would be -

Her next thought stalled in her mind. From her place on the floor of the living room, she could just see down the length of the hallway to the front door. A set of orange headlights had just swung into view, glancing across the stained glass window set into the door before swerving suddenly and disappearing.

Joan stared into the darkness of the hall, waiting for the headlights to reappear. Maybe someone had taken a wrong turn off the main road and was using their driveway to turn around. Maybe a snow plow clearing the roads. She could hear the car or whatever it was idling outside, the motor sounding thunderous in the surrounding quiet. Whoever they were, they weren’t leaving.

Her mouth suddenly dry, she took her eyes off the front door to find the shotgun leaning against the outer facade of the fireplace. She stood, placing her drink on the mantel, and reached for the gun. She could feel foolish later on when she realized it was just a stranger lost in the snow loitering in her driveway. For now, she wanted to feel safe.

Just as she was hoisting the gun into position, she heard the engine outside shut off. The unmistakable slam of a car door. She stepped lithely down the hall, careful not to give herself away. It was strange how the old instincts came back to her so suddenly. As if she hadn’t spent two years and some change cooling her heels in the countryside.

A figure came suddenly into view from behind the frosted window in the front door, the silhouette warped by the texture of the glass but unmistakably male. She felt her pulse spike in her throat. He was staring at her through the dark. She stared right back, shotgun tucked up under her arm. It was his breathing that eventually gave him away, the same manic rhythm that she heard in her dreams.

She stepped forward and pressed the barrel of her gun to the glass, millimeters away from his skull on the other side. Made sure to swallow the bubble of fear in the back of her throat before she spoke. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.”

The shadow shifted his weight, cocking his head as though to peer around the barrel. “Because you couldn’t do it two years ago, and you can’t do it now.”

His voice sent a spike of panic through her chest, her worst fears were confirmed. She fell silent, finger curling and uncurling around the trigger. She hadn’t even checked if it was loaded. In the distance, she heard the crackle of firewood and missed the quiet calm that had been her life just moments ago, now rapidly disintegrating into ash and soot.

A sigh from the other side of the door brought her back to her current nightmare. “Open up, Joanie. It’s cold out here.”

He could force his way in if he wanted to. No reason to be polite about it. She didn’t want Sasha to wake up to the sound of breaking glass. Maybe she could make him go away before Sasha could even find out he was here. _Maybe_. She reached out, slowly, as though in a trance, and turned back the lock, stepping back to keep him in her sights.

The man who stepped through the door was not the monster from her nightmares. No makeup, no purple suit, no knife. Dressed in a set of hand me down clowns and a jacket two sizes too big, the man before her looked haggard and wan. His hair was a dull mousy color, faded green at the ends and tucked messily into a small bun at the back of his head. The only traces that remained were the scars, chapped and red from the cold, and the cruel glint in his eyes. He smiled when he saw her, as though actually delighted to be at the end of her gun once more. The door closed behind him with a note of finality.

“Not quite the warm welcome I was expecting, but I’ll take it.”

Joan kept the gun steady as she backed down the hallway, careful not to trip on the cat who was suddenly interested in what was going on. “Go sit on the couch.”

When they were clear of the hall, she watched as he ambled into the living room, taking care to leave as much snow on the carpet as he could. He quickly spotted her drink on the mantle and knocked the rest of it back in a single gulp. “Maybe you were expecting me after all, huh?” He huffed, putting aside the empty glass to hold his hands close to the fire.

“I said, go sit on the couch, asshole.” She gestured to the couch with the barrel, hand poised around the for-end.

The Joker raised his hands in a display of resignation and shuffled over to collapse on the couch. Curtis leapt up beside him to say hello. _Traitor_ , she thought sourly.

There was a tense spot of silence and for a moment, Joan wished Sasha was awake and standing beside her. If only to confirm what she was seeing was real. If only to liven the dulling shock in her belly with a bit of genuine concern. With the gun still trained on the man in front of her, she lowered herself somewhat unsteadily into a nearby armchair. “What’re you doing here?”

“Well, I’m out,” he replied neatly, clapping his hands heartily on the meat of his thighs, “And I needed someplace to crash. Big place like this, I figured you wouldn’t mind the company.” He paused to give the cat a firm scratch under its chin with the crook of his finger. “You here all by yourself?”

She swallowed hard, the terror that had failed her at the door suddenly filling her stomach. “No.”

“That’s too bad,” he smirked, “Though I’m sure lover boy missed me just as much as you did.”

She had nothing to say to that, too busy wondering how bad it would be if she just vomited on the carpet. Her jaw clenched and unclenched as she fought the urge to heave. There were black spots floating just out of sight in her peripheral vision, the kind she knew precipitated a panic attack. _That_ was out of the question. Showing any sort of weakness would get her killed - or worse. Being dragged back to Gotham in the trunk of a car certainly qualified as worse.

“You seem awfully calm, Joanie,” he mused, squinting at her, “This feels almost cozy. Except for the shotgun, of course.”

She tried to play it cool, forcing herself to smile. “I’m still trying to decide if this is all just a bad dream.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his eyes flashing with firelight. “If I touch you will that make it real? Or will that just make it a _good_ dream?”

Before she could answer or simply shoot him for his insolence, she heard a rustling from around the corner. The whine of the mattress, a muttered curse as Sasha knocked his knees against the bedside table, just like he did every morning. And then the tell-tale heavy patter of his bare feet. _Heel-toe, heel-toe_. He announced himself from the kitchen, still out of sight.

“You alright, babe? It’s late - you should come back to bed.”

He emerged beneath the archway that separated the kitchen and the living room, hair rumpled, his cheek creased with the pattern of the pillowcase. Still half-asleep, it took him a moment to notice the shotgun in her lap or the man sitting across from her on the couch. But things fell into place rather quickly.

She watched his mouth flatten into a thin line, his expression inscrutable as he stared at the back of the Joker’s head and she grew suddenly afraid.

_Had he found the letters? Did he know he was coming? Is he angry with me?_

But then he was crossing the room to stand by her side and in the low light, she could see the fear plain in his eyes. He tried to reach for the gun and when she resisted, tightening her hold on the stock, he settled for placing a hand on the back of her chair. The Joker watched the entire exchange with an expression of half-concealed glee.

“I don’t think we’ve ever formally been introduced,” he announced, extending his hand toward Sasha with a flourish.

“Aside from the time you threatened me for information. Or when you broke into Joan’s apartment and had your men beat me unconscious,” Sasha spat, not even sparing a glance at the Joker’s attempt at a handshake.

The Joker made an exasperated noise. “Oh _that_? It wasn’t personal, lover boy - trust me.”

“Sasha,” he corrected.

“ _Sure_ \- my point is that I’ve got no beef with you. Or Joanie here. I’m just looking for a place to rest my weary bones is all.”

“Does this look like a fucking motel to you?”

“Sasha,” Joan whispered, looking up at him. The back of her chair had started to shake under his grip. She needed to take control, and fast. The Joker might have appeared as a shade of his former self, but neither of them were prepared for a fight. Not tonight.

He glanced down at her, the veins in his neck standing out starkly against the pale column of his throat. They stared at one another and she silently begged him to stand down, to understand how far out of his depths he was. He seemed to relent, removing his hand from the chair to settle it on her shoulder. The weight of it felt grounding. It helped Joan make up her mind.

She unclenched her jaw and fixed her eyes on the Joker. He stared right back. “You can stay here for the night.”

“ _Joan_ -” Sasha’s fingers bit into the muscle of her shoulder and she flinched, stifling the urge to shrug him off. Instead, she stood up, brandishing the shotgun properly. Her hands already ached from holding it too tightly.

“In the morning, we can discuss terms,” she continued, “I’m sure you’ve got a weapon on you so I won’t embarrass myself by asking you to play fair. But try anything tonight and I’ll blow your head clean off. Understand?”

The Joker smiled, his nose wrinkling with what appeared to be genuine delight. “Yes, ma’am.”

And with that he swung his boots up onto the couch, effectively sending Curtis scurrying off to the opposite end of the house. She watched him as he settled in, punching into the lone cushion with unnecessary force and bundling his body away from them.

“ _Joan_!” Sasha hissed in her ear and tried again to take her by the elbow. This time, out of the Joker’s sight at last, she pulled out of his grip, motioning for the kitchen instead. She led the way, back through the kitchen, down the hall, and into the bedroom. When they were both inside, she locked the door and set a nearby chair under the knob for good measure. The joints in her fingers sang when she set the gun down on the loveseat that sat at the end of their bed.

“What the fuck are you thinking?” “I’m thinking it’s 2:00 am and I’m not in the mood for a gunfight.”

“So you’re just going to let him camp out on the couch like he’s an old friend visiting for the holidays?”

She took a seat next to the shotgun and buried her head in her hands. They were alone now. She could allow herself a second of silent despair. “It’s just for the night, Sasha,” she muttered into the cage of her hands.

“Bullshit,” he replied smartly, “If we give him an inch, he’ll kill us in our sleep.”

She bit back a groan, her teeth sinking briefly into the meat of her palms. “If he wanted us dead, we’d already be dead. He would’ve broken in if I hadn’t just opened the door. At least now we don’t have to replace any of the windows.”

Silence. When she lifted her face to look at Sasha, he was staring at her with a cold incredulity. She’d never seen him wear that expression before. It warped his face. Made him look like a stranger.

“You’re being weirdly casual about this, Joan.”

It was the second time that night someone had said as much to her. She felt a wave of resentment heave in her chest which she struggled to stifle. “No, I’m being calm. Which is what we both need to be if we’re going to handle this right.”

She got up from the loveseat, rage still simmering in her chest, and wrapped herself around him, hoping the pressure of his body against hers might make her feel better. Might make her feel like herself. It took him a moment to return the gesture, something Joan forced herself not to linger on. Only when she felt his lips press at her temple did she finally pull away, ready to crawl back into bed. Her body was exhausted from the unexpected spike of cortisol.

“Are you going to make me sleep alone?” Sasha was still standing by the door as she slipped under the sheets, the disbelief present but softened in his face. It wasn’t a fair question, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted back the man who used to treat her like glass. At least for tonight.

“I can’t sleep while he’s in our house.” As if to prove his point, he opted for the loveseat, settling next to the shotgun, taking it across his lap. In the moonlight coming in through the window, its muzzle shone like the wet snout of some large, iron hound.

 _I’ve done it before_ , she thought suddenly before promptly burying her face in her pillow, half afraid that bit of unhelpful information might find its way out of her mouth. She curled up on her side, facing the ancient bookshelf that towered to the left of their bed. Her eyes automatically found the book that was full of the Joker’s letters. It was undisturbed, sitting plainly under a thin layer of dust, one of the many unremarkable volumes on the shelf.

Sasha hadn’t found them. Might never have known about the rabid storm of ink and empty threats that had been building for the last two years if the Joker hadn’t decided to show up. Despite the promise she’d made with herself. Joan was not any closer to revealing her cache of secreted letters than she had been the day she received the first unmarked envelope. And now, she reasoned, she didn’t have to. The secret was sleeping soundly under their roof.

 _I’ll burn them in the morning_ , she thought, an old mantra. As she closed her eyes, edging ever closer to sleep, she imagined tearing the letters into pieces, scattering the bits of paper into the fire. In her dreams, the fire smelled like sage and the smoke was white with absolution.


	3. Chapter 3

Morning came, shining with a pissy yellow cheer, the sun burning bright against the back of her eyelids. Her first thought: _Sasha forgot to close the curtains again_. She turned, still stupid with slumber, to swat him lightly for his mistake - and found he wasn’t there. Instead, the space beside her was cold and unmade.

She blinked dumbly, craning her neck to glance around, her eyes landing on the door. It stood ajar, the desk chair sitting just beside it, a stark reminder of what had happened the night before. _Oh,_ was her next thought, the reality of the situation smacking her square in the face. _Right_.

The hardwood was cold under her feet as she slid out of bed and she rubbed quickly at her face, blinking the last remnants of sleep from her mind. She’d slept better last night than she had in weeks, her body too tired for her mind to give her any grief. _Figures_. She didn’t bother with her slippers or her robe, hoping the chill in her bones might brace her for whatever she found beyond the bedroom.

As she trudged down the hall, she was greeted with a familiar comfortable silence and the smell of coffee. For one brief desperate minute, Joan imagined that it had been a dream after all. She’d had similar dreams in the past; waking up to fetch a glass of water and finding the Joker in her living room, or worse, in bed beside her. They were vivid, nauseating nightmares but dreams nonetheless. When she emerged from the hall into the kitchen, however, she realized the deep stupidity of hoping otherwise.

Sasha sat at the kitchen table, his eyes trained on the scene in the living room where the Joker was still fast asleep, still dressed in his boots and coat. The shotgun was lying on the table next to a mug of coffee and a half-empty box of ammo.

“This thing wasn’t even loaded,” he murmured, not sparing her a glance as she loitered near the mouth of the hall. She didn’t care for his tone - accusatory, disappointed - so she opted to ignore him, moving to the counter to fetch a cup of coffee. The first sip burned her tongue and she quietly savored this fresh bit of pain as she took her own seat next to the table. She didn’t know how long Sasha had been out here watching the Joker and she didn’t really want to know.

The Joker seemed totally unaware that he was being watched. After two years in Arkham, she supposed he was used to it. In all the time they’d spent together, she’d only seen him sleep once - after he’d castrated one of his henchmen and nailed his dismembered cock to a door - and the sight of him doing so human had been as perplexing as it was alarming. But now, in the safety of her own home, with some small measure of protection sitting on the table in front of her, things were different.

Without his makeup, without all the complimentary grime and darkness, he just looked like a man. Pale and vulnerable beneath the weight of sleep. Every now and then the hard plane of his back would twitch, like a dog caught in a dream, and Sasha’s hand would hover toward the gun. But then he would simply grunt, burrow his face deeper into the couch, and fall back asleep.

Joan watched the Joker alongside Sasha for the next ten minutes or so, glancing between him and the large window above the sink. It had started snowing again, falling down in heavy slanted sheets of white. If it kept going at this rate, they might have a foot of snow by noon. _One of us will have to scrape the driveway_ , she thought vaguely, before turning her attention back to the more menacing problem in her living room.

Without a word to Sasha, she got up and retrieved another mug, filling it with a careful pour. It was only when she started for the couch that Sasha seemed to understand what she was doing.

“You’re bringing him coffee?” he stage-whispered, standing halfway out of his chair, hand already reaching for the shotgun again.

“I said we’d talk terms in the morning, and I’m not waiting another three hours for him to wake up,” she replied, “Unless you’re really keen on watching him sleep.”

He made a face, which was all the permission Joan figured she was going to get from him. As she rounded the couch, he finally grabbed up the shotgun and decided to join her, muttering something about just shooting the bastard as he took his place next to her.

She adjusted her grip on the mug as she bent down to prod the Joker in the back. “Hey,” she muttered when he did not immediately stir, giving him another firm poke.

And then, all at once, he was awake, sitting up so abruptly she nearly spilled the coffee when she pulled back to give him room. He still moved like an animal, always on the verge of fight or flight, all his instincts shaved down into something feral. He blinked and shook his head, once, hard, as though casting off an errant thought. His eyes darted quickly to Sasha, to the gun under his arm, and then back to her.

“This my courtesy call?” His voice was reedy with sleep.

Joan didn’t bother with a reply, handing him the cup of coffee which he readily accepted. She and Sasha stood in silence as they watched him gulp it down. When he was finished, face flushed with the heat, he smacked his lips and set the empty mug beside him on the couch. Then he clasped his hands in his lap and glanced back up at them, as though it were their cue to continue.

She cleared her throat and crossed her arms across her chest for a last bit of defense. “I don’t know why you’re here or what you want, and I don’t care. You said you needed a place to crash - I gave you that. Far as I’m concerned, that means we’re square.” The Joker didn’t try to hide his yawn, interrupting her momentarily. She didn’t know whether to get angry or laugh. “But you’re outnumbered and this is my house and I’m asking you to go.”

“She’s asking, but I’m telling you to go,” Sasha snarled from behind her.

The Joker sighed, cracking his knuckles as he held them in his lap, patient as a school boy. “I’d need a car for that. Unless of course you’d have me walk back to Gotham and even to a guy like me that’s a little cold.”

Sasha huffed impatiently. “You drove here didn’t you? I saw the car in the driveway.”

“Sure, but if I take off who’s to say I won’t stick around for a while?” he drawled, not bothering to address Sasha directly. Instead, he seemed to have found a spot on the ceiling of particular interest. “I drove through town proper on the way out here. Cute place.” His eyes flickered down to look at Joan. “I’m out of practice, but I don’t suppose it would take me long to level it back into the mud.”

“And what if I shot you right now and drove your body back to Gotham myself?” replied Sasha, raising the shotgun. “What do you suppose then?”

The Joker seemed pleased with this response, fixing him with a broad grin. “I thought you might say that. Just so you lovebirds don’t get any ideas, I took the extra precaution of rigging _your_ car with a small explosive. Something I’d need to be very much alive to disable.” he continued amiably, “Say what you will about country living, but you folks have some very useful stuff in your tool shed.”

Joan blinked, suddenly dazed, shuffling back a few steps to set herself into the nearby armchair. She stared at him, struck silent, feeling the color drain from her face. She’d forgotten how quickly he could escalate things from civil to certifiably insane.

“You didn’t say I had to play fair, remember?” He gave a salacious wag of his eyebrows, tonguing his scars briefly. “How’s _that_ for terms, Joanie?”

Sasha seemed at a loss for words, his jaw opening and then closing again and again as though he were struggling for air. Good. She didn’t like this aggravated frat boy approach. Outnumbered or not, she didn’t want to see what the Joker did when he was threatened and backed into a corner.

“So,” the Joker chirped, clapping his hands together once and breaking the tense quiet of the room, “Since I’ve got the keys to the only working car, looks like I’m here to stay.” He got to his feet, briefly glancing between them as he cracked his back. “No objections? Peachy! I’ll show myself to the bathroom.”

By that point, Sasha had lowered the shotgun almost completely and he had no problem squeezing past the end of the barrel and around the couch. Joan watched his back as he sauntered into the kitchen before disappearing down the hall. When the door to the bathroom slammed, both her and Sasha flinched.

The silence stretched on, interrupted only once by the low hiss of the shower switching on. After a minute or so, Sasha walked mutely into the kitchen and set the gun back onto the table before crossing to the rotary phone on the wall, one of the last original charms of the house. The faded cream base chimed weakly as he took up the handset.

“What’re you doing?” She had to raise her voice to be heard and she suddenly realized how dry her throat was.

“I’m calling the cops,” he replied, as though the answer was obvious.

She was out of her chair in a second, striding across the room so fast it made her dizzy. Sasha’s finger was waiting to dial the final digit when she smashed her hand onto the cradle to end the call. He looked at her like she’d slapped him.

“We can’t call the cops, Sasha,” she sighed, already tired of the conversation they were about to have.

“Why the fuck not?” He tucked the phone under his chin and started to pry her fingers off the cradle, dial tone droning on from the speaker next to his ear.

“Because The Joker took down Gotham in a matter of weeks. He made the GCPD look like a bunch of simpering idiots,” she hissed, feeling the plastic creak beneath her fingers as she kept them firmly pressed on the cradle, “He’s not a petty thief or the town drunk pissing in people’s gutters - do you think the cops in Sawyer would know what to do with a terrorist?”

“So you’re saying we should just let him stay? What about fighting back? This is our fucking house for fuck’s sake.”

_My_ house, she thought hotly but opted against making the correction out loud. “No, I’m saying we play the game - the long game. Figure out a way to handle this that doesn’t involve getting a bunch of podunk cops killed.”

Sasha cursed, taking up the phone from his shoulder and slamming it back down into the cradle smashing her fingers in the process. She drew back with an embarrassing yelp, like the sound a kicked dog might make, immediately clutching her hand to her chest. His face, still red with anger, softened for a moment, realizing what he’d done. But when he reached for her, sighing with apology, she pulled away.

They stood there for a moment, not looking at one another, shame simmering in the growing silence between them. And then, still cursing, Sasha turned and walked out of the room, disappearing down the hall toward the front door. Another slamming door, accompanied by the dull thud of a few falling icicles. In the stillness, there was only the sound of the shower and the muted melody of a song being hummed from down the hall.

Joan let out a long breath. At some point, she had started crying and she dropped her wounded hand to wipe hastily at her face. Her coffee, abandoned on the kitchen table, was still somewhat warm and she took a few sips to wash down the rest of her tears.

When she could be sure her fingers weren't broken or bleeding, she went back to the living room to retrieve the Joker’s mug from the couch. She tossed out the rest of her coffee and set both cups in the sink, turning next to the fridge for the half-can of catfood she’d put on the top shelf the night before. Curtis hurried out from wherever he’d been hiding when he heard her spoon the food into his bowl. She imagined how Sasha would react, if he caught her in the act of doing something _domestic_ right now. Going on as if there wasn’t a maniac using his loofa down the hall.

As Curtis tucked into his breakfast, she scratched him once between the ears, a silent thank you for being so simple and cooperative, before she left the kitchen and headed for the front door. Sasha’s coat was still on the hook in the entryway and she took it down after slipping into her coat and a warm enough set of boots.

It was still snowing, coming down in a solid curtain just beyond the lip of the porch. The two cars in the driveway were covered in powder, all but their headlights, which seemed to stare back at her with a dull cow-eyed expression of passive reproach. But she may have just been feeling sorry for herself. Sasha was standing with his back to her on the far edge of the porch, where the railing met the side of the house. She was glad he hadn’t forgotten his boots too.

She cleared her throat as she came up to stand beside him, not wanting to startle him. He glanced at her only briefly, opting instead to stare out at the thin copse of young sweet gum trees that lived and died and lived again in their side yard. She handed him his coat and he took it without a word. While he was distracted, she swiped a small pile of snow from the railing to hold in her hands. It felt good against her smashed fingers, which had started to throb.

“I’m sorry, Joan,” he eventually muttered, his voice tight behind the chattering cage of his teeth.

“Me too,” she replied, although she wasn’t sure what she had to be sorry about. Not really.

“I panicked. I panic when I’m scared, and I’m just...I’m scared.”

“Me too,” she said again, and this time she meant it. “But if we’re not together on this, we won’t make it. I need you on my side.” _We’re stronger together_ , she thought, but it sounded too pretty to be true and she swallowed it down with a sigh. “We survived him once and we can do it again.”

“What do you mean ‘ _we_ ’?” He muttered, pausing to retrieve a pack of cigarettes from the front pocket of his coat. He lit one for both of them and she gladly accepted. “That was all you, Joan. Don’t forget that. I haven’t.”

Another swell of tears began to build behind her eyes and she quelled it with a few hard drags of her cigarette. She was suddenly ashamed of herself; for her impatience with Sasha, for being so cavalier about their situation when he was obviously so afraid. It was not the first time she realized how much better he deserved. From her and from the world.

She passed the cigarette to her bad hand and she wound the other around his arm, pulling him down for a kiss. His mouth against hers felt right, familiar, a sweet and gentle pleasure she’d enjoyed a hundred times before. He deepened the kiss, pushed his cold fingers through her hair, and Joan just wanted to fuck him, to have him fuck her, to fall asleep in their bed, and have the day be through.

But there were miles to go before they could have that kind of simple peace again. She wished silently that she still had the strength and the cunning to make it to the other side. Even if Sasha was so sure, she wasn’t.

Sasha pulled away and took her hand, kissing the fingers he’d hurt. At some point, she’d dropped her cigarette into the snow below them and when she reached for his smoke instead, he gave it over with a fond smile.

They smoked in silence for a bit, watching the snow fall, tucked into one like a pair of arctic birds. Nibbling on the filter to keep her teeth from chattering, she happened upon an idea.

“I can try and get the keys from him,” she said, flicking the smoldering butt down into the snow alongside its partner, “I’ll think of something.”

Sasha shot her a wary look but said nothing, fingering the baby hairs at the nape of her neck. An old anxious habit.

“You forget we used to be criminals too, Sasha,” she continued, “I’ll figure it out. I promise.”

She willed him to trust her, to take a stab at dumb luck. She’d go through with her plan whether or not he agreed to it, but she’d prefer to have him onboard. After a moment, he nodded, giving his blessing as best as he could. He gave her one last kiss on her left temple before he turned and made his way to the porch steps, tromping through heaps of melting ice until he reached the snowbank beside the house.

“Where are you going now?” she called down to him over the railing.

“Thought I’d clear the driveway.”

She grimaced. “Haven’t you heard? We’re not going anywhere.”

He shrugged, jostling the small piles of snow already settling on each shoulder. “It’s something to do. Keeps me out of the house at least.”

_Away from him_. It didn’t have to be said.

Joan let him go without another word, watched him wade deeper through the gale until he disappeared entirely, a speck of shadow in the distance.


	4. Chapter 4

Eventually, Joan went back inside, too cold to loiter watching the snow without a cigarette or a hat. Her hair had grown back steadily over the last year, into something short and manageable, but it sure as shit wasn’t enough to keep her warm in this weather. Her scalp tingled with the heat as she stepped into the house. After shedding her coat and boots, she stood for a moment near the door, clenching her chattering teeth so she could listen for any sounds in the house.

Silence. No running water, no whistling. Just the low steady hum of the hot water heater gurgling somewhere below her feet in the basement. She took a long deep breath and kept moving.

The Joker was in the kitchen, dressed down in his worn Arkham-issue jumpsuit, his feet bare on the tile. His hair was down, dripping steadily onto his shoulders and the ceramic countertop. She thought suddenly of the time she’d washed his hair. It had been such a ludicrous act of charity for the man that would stab her in the stomach some twenty-four hours later.

He was staring down at the cat where it was settled near his feet, eagerly licking the inside of the bowl for any last trace of slop. Curtis glanced up once or twice as though he were going to refill his dish. The both of them looked up as she approached.

“Hi,” the Joker purred, bearing his teeth mildly. They were less yellow than the last time she’d seen him. Maybe Arkham was a stickler for dental hygiene.

“You leave any hot water for the rest of us?” Her eyes flickered briefly to the shotgun still sitting on the table just beyond. She felt safer, bolder, with it there.

“What? No prison shower jokes, Joanie?” he chided, reaching up to squeeze some water from his hair onto the floor, “I’m _disappointed_.”

She grimaced, her mouth curling with a sneer. “Kind of low hanging fruit, don’t you think?”

“Well that’s why I opened the floor to you, dear,” he replied simply, peering down at the cat once more. He lifted his foot to poke bluntly at its side, again and again, until the cat gave a low petulant whine and sauntered off down the hall, unimpressed and irritated.

When Joan looked back at the Joker, he was watching her with his usual intense, cauterizing stare. Her eyes avoided his, taking in everything else they could. The flush in his face from the recent warmth of the shower, the rotten texture of his clothes.

“Why don’t I get you something to wear? Something of Sasha’s. Then you can throw that thing in the fireplace.”

That seemed to take him by surprise. “You sure lover boy won’t mind?”

She rolled her eyes. _As if you care_. “I’ll go fetch some things and then show you to the guest room.”

“ _Guest room_?” he trilled, his throat clogged with laughter. “You’re _really_ pulling out all the stops for lil ol’ me.” He took a half step forward, kicking aside the cat dish without a care. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were _happy_ to have me here.”

He was near enough now she could feel the faint tickle of his breath on her face. It smelled minty and she vaguely wondered which of their tooth brushes he’d opted to commandeer. She didn’t blink as he edged closer, fixing her face with the same bland, half-bored expression she’d always used with him. As if he were a child testing her patience. She’d never cared for his innuendos and now that he was making them in her home, with Sasha right outside, she liked them even less.

Without another word, she turned and started down the hallway to her bedroom, happy she didn’t have to tell him not to follow her. He still stared after her, peering down the hall and through the open doorway as she opened a set of drawers and grabbed up things at random. Holding a small pile of socks, sweats, t-shirts, and at least one pair of thermal underwear, she marched back down the hall and crossed through the kitchen clear to the other side of the house. The Joker followed her this time.

The guest room was exceedingly spartan, used to store extra furniture and all the spare boxes of random shit she and Sasha had never gotten around to unpacking. Rolled up in the corner was the air mattress they had used during their first few days at the house. She kicked it open without ceremony and threw the clothes onto its deflated vinyl surface.

“Pump should be somewhere around here,” she remarked and made for the door. The Joker let her pass without any trouble, silently taking in the room. She contained her sigh of relief. “Lunch is in an hour. I hope you like trout.”

If he had any actual objections, she didn’t hear them. She was already sailing back down the hall to her bedroom, affecting an air of breeziness that almost felt untenable. Once inside, she locked the door and sat down on the chair still sitting awkwardly in the center of the room, bending over to set her head squarely between her knees.

The panic attack that had been creeping up on her since last night was finally hitting. Her ears were ringing with that farway noise and she had to keep her hands clamped down on her knees to stop them from shaking so violently. Her pills, she knew, were in the drawer of her bedside table but she couldn’t take them now. Instead, she took deep breaths, deep enough to make her stomach ache as it ballooned against her thighs, each one rattling out of her like the hiss of the nearby radiator. She had half a mind to call Sasha in, but he needed to trust her, to understand that she could take control. It wouldn’t do for him to see her like this.

She still had her vision, even if it was blurring at the edges, and she tilted her head to keep an eye on the digital clock on the small desk beneath the window. If she hadn’t collected herself in twenty minutes, she’d take half a pill. About as much as she could spare. Distantly, in the part of her mind that wasn’t preoccupied with forcing herself to breath through the panic, she cursed herself for not getting a refill sooner. But they were judgemental about that kind of shit in town. She’d had a hard enough time getting the prescription in the first place.

She sat up slowly, careful not to trigger any unwanted dizziness, her eyes fixed on the glowing red numbers. This was different from the other episodes, the ones she’d had before, usually caused by bad dreams or wayward thoughts. Which is how it managed to sneak up on her. This was in her body. Not her mind. Her body, that knew to be afraid of the man down the hall, that remembered with each infinitesimal atom of its meat and muscle the damage he could do, even as her mind scrambled for calm and control. Her body still carried the scars her mind would rather forget. It made her feel powerless and small. It made her feel like an animal. Like a child.

The attack passed, with just three minutes to spare on the clock. When she could be sure she could stand without her knees knocking together, she retrieved the bottle of pills from their place. She purposefully kept her eyes from wandering to the bookshelf.

There were 3 pills left. She stared at them for a moment, considering the dosage, before pouring all three into her palm and leaving the empty bottle on the bed. It was a far cry from anything more sophisticated but it would have to do. _The frat boy approach after all_ , she thought wryly as she shuffled over to the desk. She laid the pills out on the desktop before she selected a suitably sized paper weight - some ridiculous piece of fossilized driftwood in the shape of a pelican Sasha had bought in town - and started to crush them into bits. She was careful not to make too much noise, knowing full well who could be on the other side of the door trying to listen in. When the pills had been reduced to a fine white powder she used a random sheet of looseleaf to funnel the dust back into the pill bottle, securing the cap with a final click. The pill bottle she slipped into the pocket of her robe. Either it would work and it would knock him out cold for a few hours. Or it would accidentally kill him.

As she shrugged into her robe, pulling the sash tight around her waist, she couldn’t say which outcome she preferred.

†

Fishing laws in the state of Maryland were pretty lax. Joan had gotten a couple hundred pamphlets in the mail when she applied for her fishing license, all detailing the directives for freshwater seasons, recreational fishing, and the regulated species that you could catch in nearby lakes and streams. Nobody ever really came to fish or boat on their particular section of lake - probably because the townsfolk were still wary about the new neighbors. She hadn’t seen more than a handful of fishermen in the bay in the last two summers, so she’d often wondered why she even bothered with a license. She chalked it up to some ridiculous sense of deference for the lake itself. She’d wanted to be respectful.

And sometimes it paid off. Before it got too cold to spend hours by the water with a fishing rod, she’d caught a decent amount of sizable trout and even a catfish, a hefty mean bastard who’d fought tooth and nail for freedom until the bitter end. Sasha had plans to fry the catfish in some vodka and beer batter concoction, so for lunch she’d decided on trout. The fish, a faded murky green, was nearly the length of her forearm. She’d gutted the thing two months ago before packing it in shrink wrap and stashing it deep in the freezer - a ritual that never failed to remind her of her former life.

The trout was thawing in a bowl of warm water, staring up at her blankly with its pale yellow eyes, when the Joker emerged from the guest room. He’d changed into the clothes she’d offered him. Red wool sweater, grey sweats. He had his wet hair tucked back in a bun. She hated how normal he looked. How he seemed right at home in her kitchen. She went back to staring at the fish.

“Wifey hard at work in the kitchen, huh?”

She didn’t have to look at him to hear the smile in his voice. Her eyes squinted to focus on the trout. _Twenty-one brown spots, twenty-two, twenty-three_ …

He shuffled closer, stopping at the kitchen table to fiddle with the box of ammo. A small panic fluttered in her chest, but he eventually drifted away, running his hands over the kitchen counter, the coffee maker, the bread box, the drying rack, like a distracted child in a store. _Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven -_

“I noticed you don’t have a tv.” He stood beside her now, staring down into the sink as though trying to divine what could possibly be holding her attention away from him. “What’s up with that?”

She stopped counting when she reached forty brown spots, figuring he wouldn’t wait long for a response. “We stream movies online. TV too.”

“ _Stream_?” He said it like it was a dirty word. “What about the news? Do you stream the news?”

“Nope,” she replied and pushed up the sleeves of her robe to fetch the fish out of the sink. She brought it up with unnecessary force, silently relishing as the Joker craned his neck away from her in disgust. She set the fish on the cutting board and reached into a nearby drawer for her knife.

“No tv, no news - how the hell am I supposed to keep myself entertained around here?” He had wandered off into the living room, plopping himself down on the couch in defeat.

 _I’m sure you’ll think of something,_ she mulled, hoisting up the trout by its tail and sliding the blunt edge of her knife down its length. The scales came off gradually, with only a few passes, the thin papery white substance collecting on the blade like fresh snow. When she washed off the scale residue, she went back to the cutting board to filet the fish, delicately unfolding its grey and pinkish flesh. The fins and the head were next, disposed of with an efficient chop. The bones were always a tricky business but she could leave that for after she was done cooking - they were easier to handle then, brittle as glass from soaking in hot oil.

As she sloshed a bit of frying oil into a pan, she noticed her hands were shaking. She immediately put one hand in her pocket, fingers closing around the pill bottle, savoring its promise. It wasn’t lost on her that she used to do the same thing with her scalpel. And then with her gun. She wondered how obvious she looked, reaching into her pocket now, but when she glanced over her shoulder to see if the Joker was watching her, he wasn’t. Instead, he was staring into the fireplace as though there was some amusement to be found in last night’s ashes.

She seized the opportunity to fix him a fresh cup of coffee, although fresh was a stretch of the imagination. Fetching his mug from the sink, she poured out the remaining sludge from the pot and added a spoonful of sugar along with the contents of her pill bottle. The drugs foamed at the top of the coffee, so she made all the little bubbles disappear with a hasty swipe of her finger and left the mug on the counter.

“There’s some coffee left if you like,” she called, not bothering to look up from the stove. Over the crackling of the frying pan, she didn’t hear the Joker get up from the couch and come into the kitchen, but she could feel him standing there, just outside of her periphery. She tried not to feel intimidated, reasoned she could fling the pan of hot oil at his face if he tried anything.

“You’re quite the homemaker, Joanie,” he murmured, “I had no idea you were so _domestic_.”

Joan flinched, his voice creeping up along the back of her neck. He was closer than she thought, right at her shoulder. She glanced up at him and calmed immediately when she saw the cup in his hand. “Neither did I,” she muttered, turning her eyes back to the pan, “To tell you the truth.”

“Do you miss it?”

She didn’t have to ask what he meant. Still, her fingers tightened uneasily around the grip of the spatula in her hand. “No.”

“I think you do. Maybe just a little,” he mused, pausing to take another sip of his coffee. “Although I admit it must be easier on you now that your victims are so much smaller. Tell me - does that make you feel _powerful_?”

“Did they teach you how to psychoanalyze people at Arkham? Because that’s impressive.”

The Joker snorted into his cup. “You’d be amazed, Joanie. The mental mind fuckery I had to put up with in that shit house.” He chewed thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek. It made a low, disgusting squelching sound. “You know - come to think of it - you actually remind me of my doctor. She was cute. A real tightass just like you.”

“You must have a type,” she replied coolly and nearly dropped her spatula on the floor when the Joker suddenly exploded in a burst of riotous laughter, too loud in the quiet space between them. Her neck flushed with that sickly hot-cold sensation she always felt when she was badly surprised. She fixed the Joker with a glare just in time to see him finish off the last of his drink.

He smacked his lips with a satisfied smirk. “Still funny, Joanie. And still a bad liar.”

It was at that moment that Sasha came back inside. She heard him stomping the snow from his boots in the entryway. When he emerged into the living room, his eyes immediately found them in the kitchen standing suspiciously close over the stove. He glanced between them, his face wracked with confusion, before eventually landing on the Joker.

“Is that my sweater?” He sounded caught between disbelief and disgust.

The Joker pinched the collar between his fingers and gave it a casual tweak. “Oh this? Yeah. Joan said you wouldn’t mind.”

Sasha looked from him to her, his jaw slack. The end of his nose was red from the chill and his eyes had a wet, rabbity quality. It made him look like he was on the verge of tears.

“Lunch is almost ready,” she said plainly, cutting off a discussion about lending the Joker his things before it could start. She could apologize to him later, when everything was said and done. “Why don’t you wash up?”

He stood there for a moment, apparently stunned into stillness before turning and abruptly stomping off in the direction of the bathroom. He slammed the door behind him and the Joker looked back at her with an expression of exaggerated distaste.

“What a drama queen. I don’t know _how_ you put up with him.”

Joan just smiled, serene as she could manage despite the hot oil spitting up at her from the pan. The pills wouldn’t take long to kick in. Considering how much she had dumped into his drink, she would say twenty minutes tops. The thought seemed to steel her as she flipped one filet of trout and then the other, one eye fixed on the digital clock of the oven console.

Twenty minutes. She could do twenty minutes. And if he wasn’t out cold by then, she would run him through with the boning knife still sitting on the counter.


	5. Chapter 5

Lunch was served at 2:00 pm on the dot. The silence was awkward, verging on painful, disturbed only by the sounds of the Joker’s fork scratching over his plate and the occasional grunt as he cleared his throat. Sasha ate in silence, clearly struggling to process what was happening. He kept glancing between her and the Joker as though trying to figure out what had happened in his absence. Joan kept her eyes fixed on some middle distance between them, the food on her plate went mostly untouched. The shotgun remained on the table as a befitting, morbid centerpiece.

After a while, his plate nearly licked clean, the Joker set down his fork with a clatter and leaned forward, elbows on the table. He squinted hard, fixing Sasha with a look of suspicion. “I thought I killed you.”

Sasha blinked, his next bite frozen in mid-air. “Well,” he replied carefully, as though unsure of how best to proceed, “You didn’t.”

The Joker nodded thoughtfully. “That’s too bad. I don’t like loose ends. See, Joan _used_ to be a loose end,” He picked up his fork again, gesturing with the pronged end for emphasis, “Until she became an asset.”

Joan felt her back molars clench painfully. “Can we not talk about me like I’m not here?”

The Joker ignored her plainly, eyes still fixed on Sasha. “What makes _you_ an asset?”

He grimaced, dropping his own fork beside his plate. “What is this? An interview? Are you recruiting me?”

“Nah,” the Joker grunted with a shake of his head, “I’m just trying to figure out what Joanie here sees in you. I just don’t get it. I mean, you’re the one who gave her up in the first place. Personally, I can’t stand _squealers_ \- I would’ve killed you ages ago.”

More aggravating silence. Joan’s fingers tightened around her fork until her knuckles turned white.

“But you’re still here! Playing house and everything,” the Joker continued, pausing to pick a bit of fish from his teeth, “So I thought maybe you could, uh...explain it to me.”

Sasha huffed out a laugh. “If you really think I’m going to entertain this conversation, you’re crazier than I thought.”

The shift in the air was imperceptible, like a slight drop in barometric pressure before the storm. But Joan felt it. A sick curdling deep in her stomach. The kind of alarm that anticipated pain. She glanced up from her plate to find the Joker was smiling at Sasha, the expression stopping just short of his eyes. She wondered briefly if she had time to grab the knife on the counter before he lunged at Sasha.

But then the moment passed and the Joker was looking away, stifling a huge yawn in the crook of his arm. When he reemerged, he locked eyes with Joan, smiling sleepily. “Fish was great, Joanie. Best meal I’ve had in two years.”

“Thank you,” she replied woodenly, watching him warily as he got to his feet. The legs of his chair whined unpleasantly against the floor as he pushed it back into place.

“Think I’ll lie down for a nap,” he announced, “In the _guest room_.” At this, he threw Joan an obvious wink and ambled off, as if he hadn’t made the last half hour unbearable for everyone.

When he was gone, Sasha seemed to melt back into his chair, the tension draining from his body in an instant. “What the fuck was that about?”

“No idea.” Her face felt numb, her head far away from her body. She swallowed around the lump in her throat and prayed the feeling would pass. Another attack might send her back into bed for good and she needed to be awake and alert for the next few hours.

“Why did you let him talk to me like that?”

She frowned, hearing the question as though from the bottom of a deep well. “ _What_?”

“He was basically threatening me and you just let him,” Sasha was leaning forward in his chair, trying to catch her eye. “And you gave him my clothes? How am I supposed to feel?”

A sudden spike of anger, petulant and feral, tore up through the center of her. She couldn’t believe he was pulling this shit, after the conversation they’d had on the porch. He was supposed to trust her. Not accuse her of taking the Joker’s side in some petty power play.

“I don’t _care_ how you feel,” she muttered, trying hard to keep her voice quiet, “I care about getting the keys to the only working car and getting us out of here. I can’t do that if I have to worry about your feelings every step of the way.”

Sasha’s expression hardened, a door pulling swiftly shut, and she immediately knew she’d gone a step too far. The anger turned over in her stomach, soured into shame. They watched each other for a moment, stewing in a familiar bitterness, until he finally stood up from the table with a reluctant sigh.

“Fuck you, Joan,” he said simply and left the kitchen, not bothering to bring his plate to the sink. Distantly, she heard the door to their bedroom click shut.

Finally alone, she closed her eyes, teeth pinching at her bottom lip. Her thoughts wandered to the bottle of vodka chilling in the freezer. Felt the unmistakable itch for a drink in the back of her mind. The panic and the anger had passed, replaced instead by a low, simmering hatred. She didn’t know who she was more upset with: Sasha, the Joker, or herself.

She hadn’t meant to be so rude to Sasha. Probably hadn’t been so carelessly cruel to him since before they moved to Sawyer. But as guilty as she felt, she was right. She couldn’t take control of the situation if she also had to worry about maintaining Sasha’s ego in whatever dick measuring contest the Joker so badly wanted to bait him into.

If the Joker wanted to mess with Sasha, he would find a way. Without another outlet for his energy, the Joker would gladly pick at someone until they fell apart. It wasn’t personal. It was just something to do. Joan could put Sasha back together if she had to, but they both needed to be alive for her to do that. And preferably miles away from the Joker. She had to find a way to communicate that or she might lose the only ally she had.

She mulled over how best to apologize as she cleared the table, glancing once at the oven console clock to get an estimate on her time. Thirty minutes. She gave herself another fifteen to put the dishes in the dishwasher and put away the rest of the trout in a series of mismatched tupperware boxes.

_Would Sasha appreciate a blowjob? Or would that be too obvious? Too desperate for approval?_

She used to be able to fix all her problems that way. Back in Gotham, anytime she hadn’t responded to his texts or screened his calls for days at a time, he would corner her at Mason’s or catch her by surprise at home, his pride bruised, and she could simply drop to her knees and make him forget why he was so angry at her in the first place. She didn’t have to talk about her feelings, her intentions - not with her mouth full. But things were different in Sawyer. They were a proper couple now and proper couples communicated, as irritating and inconvenient as that was.

Plus they hadn’t had sex in a while. Maybe a few weeks. The last time had ended in an argument, the same goddamn argument they’d been having for the last six months. Sasha would ask her the Question, the one she dreaded: if she’d given any more thought to going off birth control. Joan would say no. Sasha would accuse her of hiding her pills from him, of avoiding the conversation, of avoiding intimacy, of avoiding him. Joan would turn into a stone wall. And around and around they went, until it was difficult to imagine they’d been happily fucking hours earlier.

The memory reinvigorated her desire for a drink and she took several deep breaths, closing her eyes to recenter herself. When she opened them again, she stole another glance at the clock. Her time was up.

There hadn’t been any noise from beyond the guest room door, but still she moved warily as she approached. The door swung wide under her hand, cutting through the silent air with a low whisper, and her eyes immediately found the Joker, curled up on his side on the half-deflated air mattress, as though he had started pumping it up and thrown in the towel halfway through. He was out cold, but he was still breathing, snoring weakly into a make-shift pillow. Her pulse quickened as she closed the door behind her and stepped further into the room.

There was a pile of clothes beside the bed which she checked first, fingers moving deftly through coat pockets and inside socks, never taking her eyes off the Joker. She even checked the cuffed legs of his Arkham jumpsuit. No luck. The keys must be on him. _Because of course they were_. The man would go to his grave making things harder for Joan. She held her breath as she inched closer, her knees nudging the edge of the mattress as she leaned over to slip her hand into the left pocket of his sweats.

His body was so warm, just as horribly feverish as she remembered. She couldn’t help but shudder, wriggling her fingers deeper, her knees straining from the weight as she hovered over him. Nothing in that pocket. She tore her hand away with a muted curse, eyeing his body. If he hadn’t woken up by now, maybe she could get away with pushing him on his back. Adjusting her weight slightly, she reached over, curled her fingers around his hip, and pulled.

He was awake instantly, springing up at her like a spider, hands reaching for her neck. The world turned, her scream catching in her chest as her back hit the floor. He had her pinned before the dread even had time to set in.

“Did you _really_ think…after two years in Arkham…that you could try your little tricks on me, Joanie?” The Joker was breathing hard as he settled over her, huffing into her face, and it took her a moment to realize he was trying to contain his laughter, “Those shrinks were putting ketamine in my corn flakes every morning! You think I wouldn’t notice if you slipped me a mickey?”

She was getting her breath back, slowly, even with the Joker’s legs pinching around her middle. “Then why drink it? If you knew, it was a trap.”

He smiled, the expression slow and predatory, leaning forward until his face was level with hers. “And miss this moment with you? No way, Joanie.”

He was so close now, she nearly had to cross her eyes to keep him in her sights. So close, he was practically breathing into her mouth. He watched her face, eager, the edges of his mouth curling up in delight. Waiting for permission, maybe. Or waiting for her to crumble underneath him so he could play with her broken parts.

The last time he’d been this close, she’d been drunk and out of her mind with a raw desperation and he had licked his own blood from her teeth. She’d thought he was going to fuck her then, thought she was going to let him. She was stone sober now and the same unspoken suggestion hung over them, a subtle and terrible tension in the air, like an omen she couldn’t divine.

The same pull in her guts, like the feeling of peering over the ledge of some extreme height and getting the urge to jump. No thought of the landing, of the crushing pain of death. Only of the brief weightlessness, the false promise of falling.

“I can’t,” she whispered finally.

Not ‘ _no_ ’. Not ‘ _fuck you_ ’. It sounded like a weak excuse even to her own ears.

The Joker seemed to agree, his face breaking with a frown, eyes skittering over her face as though he had missed something. “You can’t….because you don’t want to?”

“No,” she mumbled, glancing away. She felt suddenly naked under his attention. She wasn’t even entirely sure what they were talking about at this point.

“Because of lover boy, then?”

A piece of his hair had come loose during their scuffle and it was tickling the corner of her eye. She blinked it away. “It’s more complicated than that.”

He rolled his eyes as though she were being difficult. “It’s only as complicated as you make it.”

She didn’t reply. Instead, she reached up to push at his chest. To her surprise, he moved with her, leaning back as she sat up until she had crawled out from under him entirely and they were sitting side by side against the soft edge of the wilted air-mattress. He was still staring at her as she gathered herself, folding her legs beneath her and avoiding his eyes.

“What do you want?” Her throat was still swollen with panic, but she somehow managed to sound more furious than she felt. “Do you want to kill me? Fuck me? I’ll give you whatever you want if you just leave now. Tonight.”

He laughed low, contemplating some private joke with himself. “Tempting offer, Joanie. But it’s not about what I want - it’s about what _you_ want.”

“Oh, fuck off,” she spat, irritation rising in her voice, “I didn’t care for this game back in Gotham, and I sure as shit don’t care for it now.”

The Joker sucked his teeth. “Maybe not. But I know the Old Joan would’ve fought a little harder for what she wanted. I mean, you didn’t even pull a knife on me - where’s the fun in that?”

“That’s really more your thing,” she muttered, “Or did you already forget about….” The sentence struggled on her tongue. Turned over and died in the silence. _Did you already forget about the last time? About the last time we saw each other?_

He was quiet for a moment. If Joan didn’t know any better, she might’ve thought he seemed distraught. But she knew better.

“You know I wasn’t trying to kill you, Joanie.” He lowered his hand, an awkward, bone-white claw onto her knee, some vestige of conciliation. “You’ve gotta know that.”

“You missed my stomach by a half of a millimeter.”

“Don’t be so sensitive - I wouldn’t have missed if I wanted you dead.” He leaned over into her space, nudging her lightly with his elbow as his hand tightened on her leg. “ If you ask me, I think you’ve gotten soft - and I don’t just mean in your _middle_.”

Before she could stop herself or consider the consequences, she swung back and hit him square in the face. It was an awkward punch, since her left hand was weak and already smarting from where Sasha had slammed the phone down on her fingers but it did the trick. The Joker reared back, blinking like a dog that had been swatted on the nose with a newspaper, and started laughing. Joan did her best to ignore him and the insistent throbbing of her hand as she got unsteadily to her feet.

“Now, _that’s_ more like it!” he crowed, voice muffled as he fiddled with his nose, no doubt checking for any blood or breakage.

He started to say something else, but she was already half-way across the room, striding into the kitchen and slamming the door behind her. She went first to the freezer, grabbed up the vodka, wrapped a handful of ice in a dishtowel, and kept moving, practically running down the hall into the bedroom.

Sasha startled when she came bursting through the door, sitting up suddenly and nearly dropping the newspaper in his lap to the floor; she realized after a moment that he had been cutting coupons. She locked the door behind her and sat down on the loveseat at the end of the bed, choking down a few gulps of vodka before either of them spoke.

“Joan, it’s barely 3:00 pm.”

She eyed him balefully as she took another long sip, ignoring the burn in the back of her throat, silently daring him to scold her again. He stayed quiet. Until he noticed her hand.

“What happened?” His voice was soft now, void of any condescension, and for a moment she thought she might cry. She washed the feeling down with another swig of vodka.

“I couldn’t get the keys,” she muttered, setting the bottle aside for the dishtowel full of ice. “I’m sorry.”

Sasha was silent for a long time. But she could feel him watching her, eyes studying the side of her face. She couldn’t tell whether or not he was still upset with her, didn’t think she had the energy left to make things up to him. Getting the keys would’ve been a good place to start.

“That’s alright,” he said finally, “We can try again tomorrow. Try something else.” He wrapped up the newspaper in his lap and set it aside, reaching back to pat her side of the bed, still unmade from earlier that morning. When she got up to join him, she brought the vodka with her. Took small sips as she offered Sasha her hand for inspection.

It hurt when he made her flex her fingers and the joints felt tender under his attention, but at least it wasn’t broken. He gave her knuckles another tentative kiss before he settled her hand in his lap with the icepack on top. His kindness made her want to scream. 

“My babushka used to say that when you hurt your fingers it means you're angry.”

“ _You’re_ the one who hurt my fingers.” She sounded like a miserable bitch even to herself.

Sasha sighed. “I thought we’d already kissed and made up about that out on the porch. I’m supposed to be mad at _you_ now - remember?”

She answered with another swig of the bottle, averting her eyes to the window. It had stopped snowing, but it was already near dusk, the sky passing mutely from grey into a sullen yellowish blue. The color of a fresh bruise. How appropriate.

There was something she wanted to say. Not an apology - something more. Something honest, that would clear the air and bring them back together again. But she was tired and rounding the corner for tipsy, so instead she kissed his cheek, then his neck, and put her head in his lap. After a while, he took his hands from her hair and went back to clipping coupons. She caught glimpses of marked down items as he worked. Expiring produce. Cans of beans. Boxes of microwave oatmeal. Kitty litter.

In a dream, she realized what she’d meant to say. But she woke up disoriented hours later to a dark room, the ice pack melted in her lap and Sasha sound asleep beside her, with only a headache and a tongue that tasted sour with guilt.


	6. Chapter 6

Sasha had always been an early riser. A leftover habit from childhood. He’d grown up the reluctant son of a Red Army hero who’d insisted on keeping his house as clean as the barracks at Alma-Ata. By the time he was six he knew how to make a bed so tight you could bounce a coin off the top sheet. By the time he was ten he knew where to hide the guns when his father disappeared into his war stories. And by the time he was fifteen, he was tired of watching the old man drink himself to death and knew he was Gotham-bound.

There had always been work for people who were happy to take the early shift. People who didn’t sleep. He’d worked security jobs mostly even though he was always ten pounds underweight and couldn’t take a punch. Small-change shit until some cousin of a friend of a friend managed to hook him up with the mob as a drug runner.

He moved product in and out of Gotham, between burroughs, and was present for hand offs to make sure things went smoothly. He was still too peakish to be considered scary-looking, at least compared to the rest of the muscle. But he was tall and he could shoot a gun and he knew how much force it took to take out a tooth or all twenty-eight if need be. Plus the Chechen were generous with him because he could speak the language and they didn’t fault him too much for being Russian.

For the most part, Sasha liked organized crime. There were rules and schedules, ranks and routine. He didn’t mind taking orders or doing grunt work cleaning up blood and broken glass. It was a life suited for someone who didn’t like to step out of line.

He’d met Joan at Mason’s. Before the mob had started to move in on his business, Mason’s bar had been neutral ground; a hole in the wall where all the roaches could parley. It was a popular spot for mob muscle because it was open all night. Sasha had been off the clock, grabbing a drink by himself after overseeing a successful trade in the Bowery. Joan had walked in looking for Mason, sweating in a pair of silver stilettos and a platinum blonde wig, holding what appeared to be a miniature cooler. Sasha knew Mason let working girls use the bathroom in the bar, but he knew at once that Joan wasn’t one of them. She looked too mean, never even made eye-contact when he offered to buy her a drink while she waited for Mason. But she took the drink he sent her way, knocked it back with a swiftness that immediately reminded him of home.

It would take him two weeks to learn her name, another two to get her number. But his persistence paid off. She would admit to him later, much later, when they were no longer strangers, on a night when she’d had too much to drink to keep herself concealed, that she’d liked the way he chased her. Said it made her feel like a woman, like someone worth having. Someone worth keeping. And she was.

He didn’t mind that she disappeared for days at a time, that she never bothered to stay the night, that she might decide to stop fucking him on a whim. Because when she was with you, she was _really_ with you, with all the unreserved presence of a wrecking ball. But there was more than one way to disappear. Sasha knew that. Had learned it first hand when he watched his father’s eyes turn flat and empty and endless, and he knew he had lost him to some other place.

Joan was the same. After the night she put the Joker’s face back together, she got real good at disappearing right in front of him. The world’s worst magic trick. He could understand that she didn’t want to talk about it, that she might’ve mistaken his persistence to bring it up as morbid curiosity. But he could tell it had shaken her, even if she’d never admit it outloud. He’d never seen her scared before but he knew that’s what he saw in her eyes, just before she shut down.

And then she disappeared _for real_. Plucked right out of her bed and carried off into the night. In the days that followed, while he nursed his broken bones and tried not to panic too much about pissing mostly blood, he wondered if she was gone for good and if he could live with that fact. Joan was tough, wouldn’t go down without a fight. Shit, she’d been fighting him for most of their “relationship”. But there was no guarantee she’d make it out alive. And she nearly hadn’t.

Things had gotten better when they left Gotham. She seemed to be healing, mostly in stops and starts. There was a softness about her now, a vulnerability she’d never shown in the city. They still fought. Whenever he got too close or pushed too hard on some old bruise. But with nowhere to run, she couldn’t hide from him like she used to and eventually she’d decided to let him in. Decided to let herself be held. And though the placid nature of Sawyer made her bored and cranky, he wanted to believe she was happier. THat she might be open to a life together, to starting a family, content as she seemed to be living with him and coming back to herself in the house where she grew up.

But now, she was slipping away from him again. Disappearing right in front of him. Because that man, that _thing_ , had come back into their lives with an ease that frightened him. As if Joan had just let him in. He didn’t understand how she could be so patient, so clinical, with the man who’d terrorized her life, who’d nearly killed them both. She insisted she had things under control and he wanted to believe her, this fierce miracle of a woman, but now he wasn’t so sure. Last night, when he’d watched her sink a bottle of vodka just to curl up on his lap like a child, he knew something had happened between them. Something rotten. And he planned to do something about it if he could.

So as the cool blue light of dawn crept in through the window, Sasha slipped silently out of bed. Joan slept hard when she was hungover, harder when she had taken a pill, but he didn’t want to risk waking her up. He made sure to arrange the covers around her so she wouldn’t wake up cold before dressing as quickly and quietly as he could.

He carried out the rest of his morning routine and walked into the kitchen freshly shaved. Once the coffee pot was set to brew, he went to the desk in the living room. It was an ancient piece of furniture, one of the few pieces they had managed to save from the decay of the house when they first arrived. He’d taken great pains to restore it back to its original glory, although it still smelled faintly of rot and the roll top hutch always stuck. They ignored the thing mostly, had pushed it into the corner and used it as a place to keep junk mail and other knick knacks salvaged from the house. But Sasha kept his gun in the bottom leftmost drawer under a stack of old magazines.

It was the last vestige of their life from before, something he used to carry on the job. He never told Joan he’d kept it. Had hoped it would never have to see the light of day. But the shotgun was too unwieldy and he didn’t want to have to worry about reloading if need be. He made sure the magazine was full and there was a round in the chamber before doubling back to the kitchen for a cup of coffee.

Sasha had never been keen on violence. His dad had been prone to outbursts that left him and his mother cowering in the car, running the engine for hours to keep them warm during winters in Connecticut. He’d killed a few men on the job, when things had gone awry and needed correcting. But that was business. As simple and straightforward as balancing a checkbook or doing the dishes. He took no pleasure in it and was happy when he was able to move higher up on the totem pole and he had a handful of other lowlifes at his disposal to take care of things for him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had fired his gun and it felt awkward and cold in his hand. He tried not to let it show as he finished his coffee and went next for the guest room.

The Joker was curled up on his cot, face buried in a pile of clothes that was serving as a pillow. Sasha wondered briefly how he was able to breathe like that but hastily shoved the thought aside as he stepped lithely into the room. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to the sight of this man sleeping. It was too unnatural to bring him any comfort and instead of feeling powerful as he stood over his sleeping form, he only felt anxious. Still, his thumb slid up over the safety. It clicked dully in the quiet.

“Wake up.” He aimed the gun down, nuzzling the barrel of the gun into the back of the other man’s head. The Joker didn’t immediately stir, so at least he wasn’t faking. Sasha pressed down harder and raised his voice. “I said, wake up!”

The Joker gave a grunt, shifting to raise his head, and his eyes crossed as he locked onto the end of the barrel. The sleep cleared from his face in one swift motion and Sasha saw his body shift with alarm under the blanket. “ _Okay_ ….I’m up.”

“Get up and get dressed. And no sudden movements.”

To his surprise, the Joker complied, moving slowly as he got to his feet and stepped into a pair of pants. Sasha kept the gun trained on his head as he knelt to lace up his boots, tried to ignore his expression of idle amusement as he righted himself, hands raised.

“Move,” Sasha snapped, nodding for the door.

The Joker’s smirk broadened but he did as he was told, ambling out of the guest room into the kitchen. He called over his shoulder as they reached the living room. “Where we headed, boss?”

Irritation bubbled in the back of his throat, but he swallowed it back. “Just keep moving. Unlock the front door and step out onto the porch.”

It had stopped snowing yesterday, but the front yard was blanketed in an impressive coat of white. It sparkled like mica in the low light and any other morning, Sasha might have stopped to take in the beauty while he had his first cigarette of the day. But instead he was walking a maniac down the porch and across the lawn at gunpoint. He immediately regretted his lack of gloves. It must have been below freezing.

“We goin for a walk?” the Joker said, raising his voice over the crunching of his footfalls, “If so, I don’t think I’m outta line asking for a coat and -”

“Shut up,” Sasha replied wetly. His nose had chosen that precise moment to open the floodgates and drench his upper lip with snot. “You’re going to disable the bomb you put in our car. And then I’m going to shoot you.” Truth be told, he hadn’t really thought the mission through to that end but it seemed like the sort of threat to make at a moment like this.

The Joker stopped to throw him a look of utter boredom, the effect of which was stunted by the fact that he was visibly shivering. Sasha gestured toward the car with his gun and they kept moving.

“I gotta say,” the Joker announced suddenly, his tone casual, immune to the threat of a glock prodding into his back, “I appreciate this direct approach. A lot more _honest_ than what Joanie tried to pull on me.”

They’d reached the car, which Sasha was unsurprised to find unlocked. It was an older model and whatever mechanism the Joker had used to open it had done the trick easily. Better than a broken window, he figured, and thought suddenly of the reason Joan had given for letting the Joker in the night he arrived. They may be in a psychological stand off with a murderous criminal but at least they didn’t have to deal with the cost of replacing a couple windows. _Touché_.

Sasha came around to the driver’s side and ducked his head inside briefly so he could scan the interior of the car. He stood back up with a frown. “Where’s the bomb?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have made it too obvious to find. Kinda defeats the point,” the Joker replied flatly. He kicked his feet up, one and then the other, sending a spray of ice in his direction.

Sasha rolled his eyes and stepped back a few feet, keeping the gun trained on the man beside him. “Get to work.”

“ _Sure_.” The Joker shuffled over through the snow, kicking up more ice as he went. He had dropped his hands in favor of shoving them in his pockets and Sasha eyed him warily, wondering distantly if he should have checked his coat for any hidden knives before letting him get dressed. Too late now. Still, he positioned himself directly behind the Joker, so he could watch him as he worked. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little bit curious.

“Like I said,” the Joker continued, his voice muffled from inside the car, “I appreciate your honesty, lover boy. Always knew you were the _heroic_ type. But I don’t know _how_ you do it.”

His mouth was open before he could stop himself. “Do what?”

The other man paused whatever he was doing, peering over his shoulder with an expression that could only be described as lecherous. “ _Joan_.”

Something sour turned over in his gut. It must have shown on his face because the Joker only grinned wider before turning back around to whatever he was doing. “That woman is a _viper_. Don’t know how you can sleep in the same bed with a broad who used to steal kidneys for a living. You ever worry you're gonna wake up with a few vital parts missing?”

“Shut up.” Sasha sniffed, wiping briefly at his nose and glancing briefly back to the house. He wished suddenly he was still in bed. If the Joker was unsettling in his sleep, he wasn’t much better once he got talking.

“I’m just saying, man” he went on, looking back once or twice to make sure Sasha was still paying attention, “She slipped something in my coffee yesterday. At breakfast. Woke up with her hand in my pocket, if you know what I mean.”

“ _Excuse me_?”

The Joker pivoted slightly, abandoning whatever he was pretending to tinker with in the car. “I know, I know,” he muttered, shoulders climbing up to his ears as he shrugged, “She’s _real_ hot and cold, and I sympathize with you, I really do. Two years, not a single reply to all my letters, and _then_ she wants to roll around just like old times. Makes a guy feel cheap, yah know?”

Sasha snapped, his free hand shooting out to grab the Joker by the lapel of his jacket and slamming him against the side of the car, pressing the gun directly to his cheek. “Stop fucking talking, right now.”

But the Joker kept going, didn’t seem to mind his irritation one bit. In fact, he was actually giggling. “But I get it. I understand. Maybe you told her not to write back and that’s good on you. I wouldn’t want my girl penpalling with another man in the clink.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? What letters?”

That shut him up. But Sasha watched, heart sinking into his stomach, as a slow grin split the Joker’s face, the rugged scars around his mouth scrunching up with delight.

“ _Ohh_ \- she didn’t tell you?”

Sasha was so stunned he actually took a step back, as though that bit of information had knocked him momentarily off-balance. He righted himself with a shake of his head. “Joan never got any letters. If she did, she would’ve -”

“Told you? Wonder why she didn’t.”

Sasha’s head was reeling, his chest threatening to burst with rage and confusion. He was distantly aware that he was shaking. From more than just the cold. Slowly, he lowered his gun, no longer concerned with some petty attempt at intimidation. He wasn’t too proud to call his own bluff; he suddenly realized he’d lost control of the situation before it began. Long before the Joker had shown up on his doorstep. Maybe even before the first letter arrived.

“I really hate to be the one to break it to you, buddy,” the Joker muttered, reaching out to give Sasha’s shoulder an almost conspiratorial pat. The gesture would’ve felt hollow even if Sasha wasn’t about a hundred miles away in his own head, watching his life spin out in front of his eyes. “But I guess we’re both suckers, huh?”

Sasha didn’t respond. His face was numb, his ears were ringing, and he wanted to wander out to the lake, see how far he could get across the ice until it split open and swallowed him whole. Instead, he took a few steps back, hand clenching painfully around the handle of the gun.

_Would killing him now prove anything? Would it make him feel better? Would it make Joan happy?_

He settled for a few quick blows, punching the butt of the gun into the Joker’s face. He heard the sound of the other man’s nose break on the first hit, but kept going and caught a spray of blood on his face for his efforts. The heat of it made him feel sick and the sight wasn’t much better. So Sasha went back into the house, leaving the Joker in a heap beside the car, the snow around him turning steadily pink. And if he heard low, eerie laughter rising up through the air as he reached the front door, breaking the stark quiet of a day that was just beginning, he just chose to ignore it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had so much fun writing this chapter. can you tell?


	7. Chapter 7

Joan woke up warm. Too warm, overheated from the hard sort of sleep that she only ever got to enjoy when she was drunk. It was always why she’d liked drinking. Drink enough and you don’t dream. You just pass out cold, and then nothing can touch you. The headache and the nausea would come later, she knew, but for now she was still half-asleep, nearly swaddled in the sheets. Sasha’s doing, no doubt. Whenever he tucked her in, she always felt like a psych-ward patient, strapped down for the long haul.

As her eyes began to adjust to the flat light of the bedroom, she found she was waking up alone for the second time in a row. There had been a time when that was what she wanted. To go to bed with Sasha and wake up him already gone, no expectation of morning sex or pillow talk or fucking _brunch_. But now, all things considered, it only made her anxious. She hoisted herself up on one arm, fighting her way out of the covers with the other, dread dripping steadily into her stomach. She turned over to face her side of the room and froze. She wasn’t alone after all.

Sasha was sitting at the desk, one hand wrapped around her abandoned bottle of voda. The other was holding a letter, one of the many that were lying open on top of the desk. In the span of a moment, Joan felt her chest implode. Her mouth was sealed shut, tacky from sleep and the foul aftertaste of vodka, but after a few tries, she managed to unstick her tongue from behind her teeth.

“Sasha,” she murmured, her voice fragile with fear. She couldn’t even try to hide it. He didn’t respond. Only moved the bottle to his lips. It was nearly empty. “Sasha, please talk to me.”

A clink as the bottle was set firmly on the desk. The silence was deafening, stretching on and on.

She’d never seen him like this. When he was angry - which was rare - he got loud. He slammed doors and kitchen drawers and stomped around the house before inevitably stalking off to cool down. This was something else entirely. And she was _terrified_.

“Sasha, _please_.” She could hear how pitiful she sounded, how desperate. She hoped he heard it too. He never could resist when she made herself sound breakable. She kept talking just to fill the silence, figured it was as good a time as any to spill her guts. “I know how this looks. But –”

“How does it look, Joan?” When he finally spoke, his voice was slurred, his obvious anger diluted with vodka. He must’ve been pulling from that bottle all morning. “Tell me how it looks, because I’m - I’m the last one in on the joke.”

“It’s not a joke,” she replied, pushing aside the covers and getting unsteadily to her feet. The floor beneath her was so cold she winced. _If it’s a joke, then it’s on me anyway._

“Two years, Joan!” Sasha exploded, whipping around to face her and nearly sending the vodka flying. “He wrote you from the goddamn looney bin - for two whole fucking years! I mean, what is all this shit?”

“I never wrote back. I never encouraged any of this.”

He laughed, a hard, horrible sound forced from his chest. “You think that’s what this is about? I _wish_ it were that simple. If you were actually keeping contact with that son of a bitch, I _might_ be able to understand. Like maybe you’ve got PTSD, some kind of morbid fascination or fucking Stockholm Syndrome, whatever - _that_ I could at least try to wrap my head around. But this?.” He took another hard swig from the bottle. “ _This_ is so much worse. And I had to find out from him.”

He stopped to look at her. He’d been crying and there was a smudge of red on his cheek that looked a lot like blood.

“You knew that he knew where we were. He had our address. And you said nothing.”

She fought the growing numbness in her face and tried her best to talk through the panic building in her chest. “He was in Arkham. I didn’t think he could escape. If I ignored him long enough, I figured the letters would just stop. I didn’t want you to worry.” Her voice softened to a whisper. “I thought if – if I kept it secret, I could keep it under control.” The lies tasted so bitter in her mouth she thought she might vomit.

“Well, you were wrong,” he spat, throwing the letter down onto the desk with its brothers, “And you fucked us. You fucked our lives.”

The falling feeling in her stomach turned suddenly, violently, into rage, as though a switch had been flipped inside of her. “This isn’t my fault. I didn’t invite him here. I didn’t put a bomb in our car. I’m the one trying to fix it.”

“Yeah, he told me all about how you tried to _fix it_.” He paused to finish off the rest of the vodka. “Sounded like a great time if you ask me.”

She very nearly slapped the bottle out of his hand. But she didn’t want to bother with broken glass on her bedroom floor. “Where is he?”

Sasha didn’t reply, turning away from her to stare back at his pile of letters, his expression so full of hate she half-expected the papers to suddenly catch fire. She didn’t wait to ask him again. She shrugged into her robe and stepped around him for the door. He caught her arm on the way, holding her in place.

“Do you want him?”

She flinched away as though he’d hit her. “ _What_?”

“Is that what it is? Is that why you kept the letters? Why we didn’t leave Sawyer when we had the chance?” he begged, wet eyes pleading, all his rage evaporating in the face of his desperation, “Is that why you don’t want a baby? Just be honest with me now, Joan, please.”

For a moment, she was moved to hold him. To wrap her arms around his neck, put his head on her chest, so she could whisper sweet devotions in his ear. To confess that she needed him, that he was the only good man she’d ever known, the only friend she had. To let herself be soft, gentle, the kind of woman he so badly needed her to be right now. Instead, she wrenched her arm out of his grasp and took two firm steps away.

“Don’t be fucking ridiculous,” she seethed, her voice low, sounding as cold and terrible as she felt, “You’re drunk. Why don’t you sleep it off? We can talk about this later.”

And with that, she left, pulling the door closed behind her. She had only walked a few paces down the hall when she heard what sounded like the vodka bottle shattering as it was launched violently at the door. Broken glass in the bedroom after all. She kept moving, shoved her shaking hands into the pockets of her robe so she wouldn’t have to look at them.

The Joker wasn’t hard to find. He was in the living room, lying across the couch and pressing something up to his face. She didn’t want to know if he’d heard any of the conversation that had just transpired in the bedroom, but by the looks of things he was concentrating pretty hard on whatever he was doing with his face. As she got closer, she saw he was holding a makeshift ice pack. The dish towel in his fist was soaked with blood.

 _Ruined_ , she thought, _Just like everything he touches_.

He glanced up at her as she approached him, head lolling backward across the armrest. “What’s up, doc?”

“What the hell happened?”

“Oh this?” He chirped, raising the ice pack slightly so she could assess the damage, “Cut myself shaving.”

She frowned, eyes flickering over his face; the nose, obviously broken and then hastily reset. The bruises rapidly blooming under his eyes. The mess of rust-colored blood around his mouth, splattered down his shirt. Sasha had done a number on him. _Good_.

“You know, from this angle,” he muttered, throat clogged with blood “It kinda looks like you’re smiling.” He grinned as best he could. His teeth were red.

She fought back a grimace, shifting her weight uneasily. “I think we should talk. You up for a walk?”

“Already took one of those today. Wasn’t great.”

“A drive then?”

His grin widened. “Nice try, Joanie.”

“Look, I’ll get you something for the pain,” she sighed, “Meet me on the porch in ten minutes?”

The Joker’s face shifted as he peered up at her, black eyes glittering, as though he were looking for the lie. There was none to be found. From this angle, his frown looked like a smile. He nodded once and the ice in his hand shifted with a wet clink.

Satisfied, Joan doubled back to the bathroom, flicking on the light, keeping her eyes averted from the mirror. She was going in blind here. No plan, no real intentions. The last thing she needed was to see the fear in her own face and send it all crashing to hell.

There were a few percocets in the medicine cabinet, left over from one of Sasha’s more recent trips to the dentist. She pocketed one, ducking down to start rummaging in the cabinet under the sink. The little airplane bottles of bourbon were still safely tucked inside the box of Tampax where she’d put them months ago. Just in case. This was just in case. She downed all three in a little under a minute, gagging quietly into her palm. She hastily put the bottles back where she found them.

And then, in an old makeup bag wedged under the bend of the sink trap, she found what she needed most: medical-grade steel. The scalpel fell into her palm like the hand of an old friend. Familiar. Comforting. _Right_. She wasn’t exactly planning on using it, but then she didn’t really have a plan at all. She hadn’t gone to bed last night knowing her world would be blown to bits the next morning. And if she didn’t have a plan, she might as well have a weapon.

By the time she got back to the living room, the Joker had already gotten up and left the house. She could see him lingering out on the porch through the glass window in the door as she stepped into her boots, her jacket, and her wool hat. She noticed that he’d helped himself to Sasha’s coat as well as his snow boots which Joan found more than a little gauche. _Whatever_.

Fully dressed, she joined him out on the porch. In the bleak light of the day, without the coverage offered by the ice pack, he looked worse for wear and opened his hand for whatever medication Joan had to offer as soon as she assumed her place beside him. She deposited the pill dutifully into his palm and watched as he held the little white pill up to the light, squinting one tender eye to examine what she’d given him. Suitably convinced she wasn’t trying to drug him once again, he swallowed it down dry and motioned for her to lead the way. She set off without another word, hooking a left at the end of the driveway toward what was effectively a dead end.

Her house sat at the end of a long unpaved road. To her right, there wasn’t another neighbor for a mile at least. To her left, the road continued until it intersected with a small swell of sand and cattails bordered by a wind-battered fence of recycled wood planks. And on the other side, the lake, frozen into an expanse of blue-green glass that glowed with muted majesty. At the sight of it, her sense of déjàvu was so strong and sudden it nearly took her breath away.

_How many times had she stalked away from her father’s house, blind with rage, desperate with boredom, just to end up at the edge of this lake wishing for the courage, the madness to walk across? To slip under? To just get away, however she could?_

She resisted the urge to start looking for a sizable rock to throw out onto the ice. She could feel the Joker staring at her, waiting for something. Probably another line of questions he would inevitably refuse to answer.

“I grew up here,” she said instead, casting a glance around the feeble shore of slush and sand, “In that house. In this town.” She took a small step forward, pressing the toe of her boot onto the ice. “I didn’t look back once after I left. Not even when my father died. By that point I was already in med school and I was too busy to come back and bury him. Pretty sure I handled all that next of kin shit over fax.”

The Joker grunted in reply, obviously disinterested in what she was saying. She smiled, pleased to be wasting his time, and realized distantly that she was more than a little buzzed from all the whiskey.

“But I was always good at that - doing exactly what I needed to do. Even after I dropped out, moved to Gotham, it was just another step to somewhere else. Away from this place. And I’ve always done what I had to do. Until I met you.”

“Is this the part where you say I ruined your life?” the Joker sniffed, “If so, I would recommend getting some new material.”

“Oh, we’re well past that,” she replied, “I used to think that you ruined my life. But the more I think about it, the more I realized you actually...saved it. As fucked as that sounds. I was stuck and you...pushed me forward. Like the flood that broke the levy. ”

“Not that I don’t appreciate this heart-to-heart, but it’s a little hard to feel sentimental when it’s so cold.”

Joan pulled her foot away from the ice, turning slightly to face him. “You told Sasha about the letters.”

“Somebody had to. Almost didn’t believe you hadn’t told him,” he muttered, “But you always were a wily one. Just when I think I’ve got you pegged you go and pull this kind of shit - ” he paused to gesture vaguely toward the house. “You move to the country to play house.”

“Why did you write me from Arkham? And don’t give me some bullshit about how you missed me.”

He fell silent for a moment, staring at her with a curious expression, and she realized he was on the verge of telling her something true. “I wanted to see what you’d do,” he said finally, “And you didn’t disappoint. You never did. And you won’t now.”

They looked at each other, squinting through the glare coming off the ice around them. Joan’s hand curled defensively around the scalpel in her pocket.

“You want me to leave with you.”

It wasn’t a question, although she hoped he would step in to correct her. But it was clear as soon as she said it that it was the exact conclusion he’d been waiting for her to stumble upon since he’d stepped through her front door. And a part of her had known what he’d come for after all this time even as she tried her hardest not to look at the truth; the same way she had tried so hard to ignore the mounting stack of letters on the shelf.

He’d come for her life - just not the way she expected.

The Joker watched the realization break across her face, his smile, ruddy with dried blood and snot, curdling into a satisfied smirk. “We both know you want to. _That’s_ why you didn’t toss my letters. Why you let me come find you. Admit it. _Loverboy_ ain’t here to shame you.”

"I haven’t –” she stuttered and took a reflexive step away. The Joker only followed, inching into her space.

“ _Admit it_ ,” he snarled, suddenly so close she could smell the iron on his breath, “That you’d rather cut up bodies in the dark and stay wrist-deep in blood for the rest of your life rather than stay here, pop out a baby, and keep taking those little white pills just to feel sane until you die in bed next to that old so-and-so up at the house.”

She stood perfectly still, staring out at the lake, bile burning in the back of her throat. She felt tender, like one more false word from him could split her apart, send her into a spiral that ended with her knife in his neck. There was no telling what he’d find in her eyes if she looked at him now and she didn’t want to find out.

His hand crept up to curl itself around her elbow, thumb hooking into the meat of her arm as though he could sense she was on the verge of tearing off and needed to be held down. “The ball is in your court,” he growled, “ _Now_ it’s time to play. And I got plans, Joanie. Big plans for both of us.”

A number of things ran through her mind at once. The first was a stark reminder of how fucking crazy he really was, the sheer and staggering absurdity of what he was suggesting. The second was how badly she wanted another drink. The third she said aloud.

“If I go, Sasha stays out of it.” Again, not a question. It almost sounded like she was setting terms.

The Joker rolled his eyes, heaving an overdramatic sigh as he pulled his hand from her arm. “ _Suuure_. If you want to get all _noble_ about it.” He turned away briefly to hock up a bit of bloody snot as if the suggestion physically repulsed him.

“When do we leave?”

“Uh, I was thinking tonight,” he replied, “I’m bored out of my fucking mind around here. Don’t know how you did it.”

 _Did_. His use of the past tense didn’t escape her. He was practically buzzing with glee from getting his way, and he just couldn’t help and twist the knife a little more. He was probably about a minute away from clicking his fucking heels. When he turned to start making his way back up to the house, she didn’t follow him.

“One more thing,” she called, just as he was mounting the small hill of silt and melting snow. He glanced over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. Expectant. “Before we leave, you take the bomb out of our car.”

He huffed out a laugh, filling the air with a small burst of white vapor. “There _was_ no bomb, Joanie.” And with a final shake of his head, he crested the hill and disappeared from view.

Joan stood there, stunned into silence, riding the edge of hysteria. Too angry to laugh, too appalled to even cry. The wind picked up suddenly, howling across the ice to bite at her face, swollen with booze and the effort of holding back one too many screams.

Slowly, she let go of the scalpel in her pocket and bent down to start digging through the sand, mindful of how badly her knees were shaking. Her hand closed around a large, black stone. Its smooth surface was riddled with silt and her fingertips stung with the cold as she tried her best to dust off the grime.

She wondered briefly how many stones she’d thrown out onto the lake, how many of them had come back to her washed up on the shore in the spring. She considered the probability that she might now be holding one of the same stones she’d tossed out as a child, all the same rage and disappointment passing through the grit of time to arrive right back in her palm. Without another thought, she pulled back her arm and flung the stone across the ice.

It landed with a resounding crack.

**Author's Note:**

> lol i couldn't leave these kids alone. so happy to be back <3


End file.
